Gallery: Space Photos of the Week: Greenland and the Amazing Technicolor Coastline
<a href="http://messenger.jhuapl.edu/news_room/news-050616.html">NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/Carnegie Institution of Washington</a>01NorthernVolcanicPlains-PDS15-release.png
This psychedelic image from NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft shows northern volcanic plains on the first digital elevation model of the planet. To create the global map, the spacecraft spent four years orbiting the innermost planet 4,104 times and collecting more than [100,000 photos](https://www.usgs.gov/news/first-global-topographic-map-mercury-released).
<a href="http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2016/05/Zachariae_glacier">ESA</a>02Zachariae-glacier.jpg
Greenland’s coast has never looked so vibrant, thanks to this three-image fusion from the ESA’s Sentinel-1A radar. Shades of grey represent land, while colors illustrate the changing sea-ice type over the course of two months. For now, the Zachariae Isstrom glacier sits slightly left of the image center, but it’s been shedding five billion tons of ice every year because of climate change. Should it disappear completely, global sea level would rise by more than 1.5 feet.
<a href="https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/2016/fort-mcmurray-wildfire-in-alberta-canada-deemed-extreme">NASA MODIS Rapid Response, Jeff Schmaltz</a>03alberta.a2016124.1950.250m.jpg
Wildfires have [forced](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-canada-wildfire-fortmcmurray-idUSKCN0XU2D8) the evacuation of the 88,000 residents of Fort McMurray, a city in Alberta’s oil sands region. The Suomi NPP satellite, jointly run by NOAA, NASA, and the Department of Defense, [has been capturing](https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/suomi-npp-satellite-continues-to-monitor-albertas-huge-wildfire) images of the fires (outlined in red) from space.
Department of Physical Sciences, Open University04photo-2.jpg
What little liquid water there is on Mars is constantly boiling, so as far as eroding the Martian landscape goes, scientists figured its effect would be pretty minimal. To test that theory, an international group of scientists created a ‘Martian room’ out of a converted hyperbaric chamber. They found that even the highly unstable flow of boiling water can actually significantly change the Martian surface, throwing sediment around and creating dry avalanches.
